[Rd] optional package dependency

[Ross Boylan]

On Fri, 2010-01-15 at 09:19 +0100, Kurt Hornik wrote:
> The idea is that maintainers typically want to
> fully check their functionality, suggesting to force suggests by
> default.
This might be the nub of the problem.  There are different audiences,
even for R CMD check.

The maintainer probably wants to check all functionality.  Even then,
there is an issue if functionality differs by platform.

CRAN probably wants to check all functionality.

An individual user just wants to check the functionality they use.

For example, if someone doesn't want to run my package distributed, but
wants to see if it works (R CMD check), they need to be able to avoid
the potentially onerous requirement to install MPI.

Ross